January 24, 2004


A LOOK AT LEGISLATION

Many issues present themselves to me as a counselor and as such I address them in my columns. Today I am investigating an issue that grieves me.

Courts and Attorneys send youngsters for counseling because they have been arrested for sexual misconduct. This is the end product of our civilization going haywire. Perhaps if I bring this to the public’s attention we could change the milieu that is destroying peoples lives.

I believe society is sending the wrong messages to our teenagers. Pornography seems to have slipped by legislation as freedom of speech. Morals are disregarded as religious teachings. Religion is being legislated out of existence.

When I researched religions in my first year of college at age fifteen, I deduced that all religions, from early man’s animism to today’s belief in one God, had the purpose of creating principles in an attempt to rein in primitive emotions so that man could live in peace with one another.

Teens today are hauled into court because they follow their peers and lusty urges without the realization that it is unacceptable. As a young child from ages three to eight I viewed Burlesque Queens taking it off in my Uncles theater. At no time was I given the message that this behavior was permissible. Mom had come with us kids to meet Dad and go home with him. Dad, who was the manager would tell me I should not be watching the stage show. The internet, sit coms, the news, the musical videos,and movies, commercials, plus a day at the beach are more revealing now than the Burlesque Queens of the 1930’s. In fact the gyration of dancers at functions such as: weddings and public dance halls, surpass the burlesque I saw as a child. We are inundated with sexual innuendo's and often reallities. As adults whose morals are formulated we may be able to categorize this tsunami of sex, but how do we expect the lonely teenager who wants to be equal with his or her peers to resist the pressure?

This is an age old question that has become even more demanding in today’s milieu. We need to either change the laws or enforce them on all levels so that the information that impressionable youngsters glean is not then turned against them for what our legal system has allowed to exist.

I’m here to help teens determine what should be their boundaries, but when a culture is out of control how can the legal system and counselors show them when the ambiance is in total opposition? My heart goes out to the youngsters that become tangled in the “catch 22” society that enforces a legal mandate when proper direction within and without the family circle would rectify the problem in most instances.

The overwhelming tidal wave of indiscretions must have a direction which is not harmful to anyone. Community meetings with our legislators solving for a common denominator of legalese is needed. I call on America to sort this morass through. It is my fervent hope that I am heard. If Society wishes to establish morals without the intervention of a higher energy, than let us teach boundaries of respect for one another. It is not the nomenclature that is important but the compass that should be reinstated.